Born in 1861 near Canton, Illinois, Charles E. Duryea had learned the
trade of a mechanic following his graduation from high school, and
subsequently turned his interests to bicycle repair. He and his brother
James Frank, eight years younger, eventually left Illinois and moved to
Washington D.C., where they were employed in the bicycle shop of H. S.
Owen, one of that city's leading bicycle dealers and importers. While in
Washington, Charles became a regular reader of the Patent Office
Gazette,[3] an act which undoubtedly influenced his later work with
automobiles. A short time later, probably in 1889, Charles contracted
with a firm in Rockaway, New Jersey, to construct bicycles for him, but
their failure to make delivery as promised caused him to go to Chicopee,
Massachusetts, where he contracted with the Ames Manufacturing Company
to do his work. Moving there in 1890, he obtained for his brother a
position as toolmaker with the Ames Company. Thus, Frank Duryea, as he
was later known, also became located in Chicopee, a northern suburb of
Springfield.
[Illustration: FIGURE 4.--CHARLES E. DURYEA, about 1894, as drawn by
George Giguere from a photograph. (Smithsonian photo 48335-A.)]
During the summer, 1891, Charles found the bicycle business left him
some spare time, and the gasoline-powered carriages he had read of
earlier came constantly into his mind in these periods of idleness.[4]
He and Frank studied several books on gasoline engines, among them one
by an English writer (title and author now unknown);[5] this described
the Otto 4-stroke cycle as now used. Some engineers, however, were
concerned because this engine, on the completion of the exhaust stroke,
had not entirely evacuated all of the products of combustion. The
Atkinson engine, patented in 1887, was one of the attempts to solve this
as well as several other problems, thus creating a more efficient cycle.
This engine was designed so that the exhaust stroke carried the piston
all the way to the head of the engine, while the compression stroke only
moved the piston far enough to sufficiently compress the mixture. The
unusual linkage necessary to create these unequal strokes in the
Atkinson engine made it seem impractical for a carriage engine, where
compactness was desired.
[Illustration: _Agents Want{d}_